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FK: Now, didn't you end up in the merchant marine or something?

SM: Yeah.

FK: How did that come about?

SM: Well, I could see there wasn't too much of a future growing olympic berries there, you know. I always did want to go get on a ship, even when I was a kid, you know. So by then the old Korean War was going, they really needed guys bad, you know. So I got in there. I started out with a military sea transportation service, troop ships. Oh, they kind of, after the war, they kind of petered out. I went with the union after that. So I put in a good many years in the old merchant marines there. That's the story.

FK: So were you out to sea quite a bit, or what?

SM: Huh?

FK: Were you out to sea quite a bit?

SM: Not too much. I kind of laid off in the summer, two or three months. Really gets hot there in the Orient in the summer. Really, really unbearable. You know, that old seawater can get up to eighty-five plus, that's really getting pretty warm. It's like being in a bath out there.

FK: So most of the time you went to the Orient from here, or what?

SM: Pardon?

FK: Most of the time you went to the Orient from here?

SM: Yeah, I guess so, the majority of the time. But as soon as I got in the union, they'd go all over the place. And what they call, they get a charter. You wouldn't know where you're gonna end up. Then they were taking a lot of wheat over to India and Pakistan. You'd go there pretty often, too.

FK: You have any exciting moments while you were in the merchant marines?

SM: Yeah, it wasn't bad when they had the old freighters. You'd stay a few days in these ports, and it was kind of fun. But as soon as these container ships took over, they could really move their cargo, those ships. It was just a matter of a few hours. I used to go with Sealand pretty often. Biggest port, biggest discharge and taking things aboard was Hong Kong, I guess. Just about overnight about all it was there. So these Japanese ports, it was just a few hours.

FK: So how long did you do that?

SM: Oh, off and on about thirty-five years, I guess. I retired in, I retired in '86.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.